A couple of weeks ago, Jill U Adams(bio) posted a compilation of “first clip” stories. As we were gathering them on the SciLance list, we also acknowledged our deep gratitude* toward the editors of those pieces who, seemingly inexplicably, gave us our first breaks.

It began like this:

Kendall Powell(bio): I’ll never forget the simple generosity of David (Malakoff, then at Science) giving me that short assignment–it really speaks volumes about the science writing community that it’s so willing to give students a helping hand into the profession.

Thomas Hayden (bio): I really agree with Kendall about the generosity of editors toward beginners. My first assignment was an act of charity.

Jennifer Cutraro (bio): Yes, I’m sure mine was too. I’m eternally grateful to Dave Grimm (at Science) for that foot in the door. Same with my first clip in the (Boston) Globe, which came about directly as a result of the overwhelming kindness of Beth Daley.

Folks jumped in with more examples. We thought we’d take a minute to recognize the many ways that we are grateful to our editors: for first assignments, for Zen-like perspective at key moments, and for taking the time to help us get better. Here are a few of our thank-you notes.

Jill U Adams(bio): I feel so so fortunate that my first editors at The Scientist– Paula Park and Brendan Maher — were the sort who would point out when I’d done something well, in addition to pointing out all the places that needed tightening up, or more visual language, or weeding out jargon.

Alison Fromme(bio): While I was a grad student at Washington State University, I wrote a few articles for the alumni magazine. When I told my editor, Tim Steury, that I planned to go freelance after graduation, he offered me a couple of assignments going forward. It was a small but very important gesture that boosted my confidence as an independent freelancer.

Bryn Nelson(bio): During my internship at the Salinas Californian in 1999, a complicated meeting about the collapse of a local group of healthcare providers ran late and I raced back to the newspaper office with a growing sense of panic about meeting my deadline.

Sensing my distress, my editor, Catharine Hamm, sat me down and told me about her own experience to help put things in perspective. When she was an editor at the Kansas City Star, a man entered a local restaurant and set himself on fire – just before deadline. “We got through that then and we’re going to get through this now,” she said.

Suddenly, my healthcare story seemed far more reasonable. She sat beside me and encouraged me to begin by stripping my narrative down to its key elements, and her calm lesson on story assembly minutes before deadline has stuck with me ever since.

Helen Fields(bio): Betsy Carpenter, an editor at U.S. News & World Report (my first internship and first job, where I got SO much awesome education in the form of editing) sat down with me after I’d turned in a draft about some interesting archaeological findings and pointed out that I’d done the story the wrong way around. I started with the reasons why it probably wasn’t really what the archaeologists claimed it was, and only at the end got around to the evidence in favor. She sent me back to do it again: tell the story, then the caveats. I was so grateful that she took the time to diagnose the problem and explain it to me, rather than just rewriting it herself.

Amanda Mascarelli (bio): In 2004, when I was a master’s student in journalism, I did a month-long internship during the summer at Nature in London. I was walking to a pub after work with Jim Giles, who was then a news editor at Nature. I was telling him that I felt self-conscious about my work needing so much editing and I asked him if some writers ‘arrive’ at a point where they hardly need editing. He responded with something that I’ve never forgotten. He basically said that writing is a two-person job, and that it’s not really meant to be a solitary activity — that writing always benefits from having another pair of eyes, another perspective, even for the very best writers (I’m paraphrasing, but this was the gist). That might sound pretty basic, but for some reason, it was really a breakthrough for me. I started seeing edits as being complementary to my work, rather than threatening to me as a writer.

Robin Mejia(bio): Dave Gilson at Mother Jones cut one of my stories in half… and made it work. I learned a lot from that. When I found out we were going to have to cut it, I’d wanted to do it, but Dave convinced me to let him take the first pass. He cut a lot of technical details that I would have kept, but in doing so kept important context and narrative that I would have dropped because I was so close to the story that the context seemed obvious. In the end, the material he kept was far more important for readers than the technical details I’d worried about losing.

Would you like to thank an editor?** Please add your stories in the comments.

Jessica Marshall is an award-winning science, environmental and health journalist. She has been a regular contributor to Discovery News and New Scientist. Her work has also appeared in Nature, TheAtlantic.com, Science's online news service, Science News for Kids, and on public radio, among other outlets. She has taught science journalism at the University of Minnesota. Jessica earned her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley before becoming a science journalist. She attended the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is based in St. Paul, Minnesota.

12 responses to “In praise of editors”

I’d also like to add huge thanks to Laura Helmuth for giving me my first ever feature assignment and to Wray Herbert for giving me tons of work over the years. And to both of them for being awesome. And to all my other editors. Especially *you*, dear editor who is reading this. *You’re* my favorite.

I have worked with lots of great editors–just about all of them–but my particular thanks are to Peter Aldhous for commissioning my first story out of the Santa Cruz Science Writing Program: a feature for Nature as part of a trip I was taking to Jakarta. Later, when he was a mentor at New Scientist, he took the time to look at a few of my stories as I turned them in and as editors had run them and helped me see why they had changed what they did.

Also BIG thanks to editors who advocate for good freelance contract terms.

I realized I should thank my very, very first editor, Judi Bitner, the yearbook advisor at my high school, for endowing me with a love of journalism.

Also, during an internship at the L.A. Times, I landed an A1 story the week that the best of newspaper science editors, Joel Greenberg, was on vacation. So the religion editor–whose name I’m very sorry I have forgotten–went through the piece line by line on the screen with me. I’ve never forgotten his helpful critique: “Even *I* don’t know what a cruciform vegetable is!”

So many, but for starters Greg Hanscom, who told me that while there were a lot of ways to ski down a tree-filled slope, I could only pick one – I’ve always remembered that metaphor. And Laura Helmuth, who so graciously and patiently “trained” me to pitch Smithsonian.

Probably a lot of us (myself included) owe big thanks to Rob Irion of the UC Santa Cruz Science Writing Program, who kept us from embarrassing ourselves even more than we did when we hit the real world.

I’m thanking Paul Reyes, who was at Oxford American when they published my first piece in 2006. I gave him an article about an artist fleeing New Orleans after Katrina. It was over 8,000 words, full of bluster and outrage and authority I didn’t really have. He whacked it in half on the first go-round, and had gentle but very detailed and helpful suggestions for what needed to be rewritten.

I had a strong attachment to New Orleans before the storm, and this piece went in as A Statement. It came out A Decent Profile, which in retrospect I think was better than I could have hoped for in my first magazine piece.

Among the many editors I should thank, I owe a lot of thanks to two people who really helped me think differently about how I approach stories. Joe Bergantino, director of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, trained me to do enough preliminary research to focus my investigation before I even think about pitching a story-and to be prepared to switch gears if I dig up material that contradicts my key question. And Marla Cone, EIC of Environmental Health News, taught me how to make strong images do double duty by conveying critical information.

Thanks to the alumni of Science Digest magazine, who gave me my first clips. And here’s a shout-out to editors who not only nurture writers but also mentor would-be editors: I’m grateful to Michael Pollan for giving me my first editing assignment, at Harper’s magazine. Thanks, Michael, for trusting me with a piece by Ken Kesey about his son’s death. I’ll never forget that story or your generosity.

Betsy Carpenter was also my first “big time” science editor, in 1997. She was then at Science and assigned me a piece on seeds that were “fooled” into germinating by high levels of NOx pollution. (The late Constance “Tancy” Holden actually handled my very first piece, which I filed at 800 words and she cut to a 150 word Random Sample).

A piece for the defunct Washington Tribune, on raising the drinking age to 21, was my very first paid writing gig in 1981. Paid $25, and I never picked up the check! (An omen of my awful biz skills to come.)

As for giving Kendall Powell her first assignment, that wasn’t generosity — it was just talent spotting! Have to keep the good ones away from Nature.

I was an intern at Nature magazine in early 2002, mentored by Colin Macilwain, then the magazine’s Washington D.C.-based news editor. In the wake of 9-11, researcher visas were becoming an increasingly contentious issue. While covering a routine National Academy of Science meeting, it came out that the USDA had made the choice to no longer renew VISAs for non-US researchers. I ran back to the office and convinced Colin it was going to be a big story. Seeing his smile when, the day after our story ran, he opened up Science to find they also ran it as the lead that week meant the world to this aspiring science journalist.

Another editor experience I’m grateful for was with our very own Michelle (Nijhuis).

As a freelancer I often crave more feedback from editors and I always wonder what I could do to grow and improve. So once in a while, I’ll ask editors for feedback and constructive criticism. Several years ago I worked on an essay for High Country News with Michelle as my editor. After the piece ran, I emailed her and asked if she had any thoughts on what I could work on to grow as a writer.

She offered a couple of concrete tips. She reminded me of the ‘show-don’t-tell’ rule and pointed out that it’s even more important in essays because essays are usually dealing with emotions and it’s difficult to ‘explain’ emotions. She pointed me to spots in my first draft where she had worked to pull out more detail or insert a tiny scene to help the reader feel what I was feeling rather than just understanding it in their head. She wrote, “With essays, I try to remind myself to aim for the gut.” I’ve always remembered that and have tried to put it into practice!